Welcome to NASIOC - The world's largest online community for Subaru enthusiasts!

Welcome to the NASIOC.com Subaru forum.

You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our community, free of charge, you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is free, fast and simple, so please join our community today!

If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us.

The head will most likely be 243/799 LS2 heads but I may go to LS3 head depending on what kind of deals i find. Once the heads are bought I can decide what direction to go in as far as a cam

The heads will be milled in any case and the goal is to run around 11:1 compression and stay on 93 octane

The T56 will most likely be the CTS-V unit since it has a shifter setup similar to the Legacy and is improved over the F-Body units
This will send power through an LS7 Corvette clutch

Here is a picture of the first quick mockup we did once the mockup engine arrived. We are going to modify and reinforce the subframe to move the engine back another 3 inches and we are also going to use outback pieces in order to drop the subframe an inch lower

Here are few more pics we took when we were doing the initial quick mockup. This is without squaring off and center the engine and before the subframe modification and Outback subframe drop. Once all those modification are completed and the hood is swapped for a scoopless one we hope to be able to make everything clear under there.

That motor mount bracket in the middle of the firewall is now drilled out and the area patched as it was in the way

I was wondering the same thing. I understand the iron block would be cheaper, but it shouldn't be that hard to find an aluminum engine, and the weight savings on the nose is more than worth it IMO. The aluminum 5.3L engines (LM4) can be had for $500-800 complete, for instance, and will make tons of power just like the other LS motors.

The iron block LS engines are way stronger than the aluminum block. Plus you can safely overbore the iron block. And the iron block engines are ready to spin to the moon and boost like crazy with no issues.

"I am going to run the GM ECU and interface it to the CAN BUS Legacy cluster."

thats going to be tough

I'm not so sure. The CANBUS interface is an industry standard, so the communication should 'just work' with a bit of research. After that you need the commands to do as intended.

A person with the right skill set can sniff the CANBUS of both to figure out what each command does for each brand. Then said skilled person can build a 'translator' that accepts the GM ECU commands and repeats out the Subaru translation for the cars systems.

It's far beyond my skillset, but the type of guys that can reverse engineer complete ECUs should have a head start. The question is....does the builder have the know-how or the connections?

There is plenty of room. The problem is going to be getting the GM ECU to talk to the Subaru ECU. It's possible, sure. Yet that solution posted above is by far the hardest thing I can think of to make for a Subaru, or for any modified car project. Back to reality, the only "good" solution I have found to this problem (and I have put very serious research into this) is to do the simple old cam trigger and crank trigger wheel/sensor faking. Feed the Subaru ECU just enough so it will a) crank the starter, and b) not throw a CEL code. The cam trigger is the key. You can clear away any other code, but you're not going anywhere without a cam signal unless you completely bypass every Subaru ECU function. Let's say you do that, no Subaru ECU outputs except CAN, no inputs except GM ECU's tach output (which has a different logic of trigger wheel shape)... you would have to find a way to get the cluster to come alive. Any way you cut it, short of hiring a software/hardware engineer, you may be best off just adding a crank trigger and cam trigger wheel in the Subaru format. If anyone has a plan that would work better, I would love to hear it.